RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Egypt 1 – Globalism 0

Let’s stipulate upfront that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Reagan-like domination of Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections is probably an international setback to the United States, Israel and most of Southern Europe. Results thus far encompass areas that were probably most friendly to the Facebook Revolutionaries and the Western World they represented.

Amongst the cosmopolitan voters over at Starbucks, the Muslim Brotherhood holds leads in 50% of the seats. Their closest competition is an Islamist Party that caters to the Salafi School of Islam. The votes taking place in the coming days will be in the Egyptian countryside where The Muslim Brotherhood may well play Mitt Romney to a way more traditionalist Salafi alternative. The Facebook Revolutionaries will have gone from overthrowing a military junta to depending upon the Egyptian Army to protect them from being beaten down like a bunch of Coptic Christians.

It would be easy to insult and belittle the People of Egypt. They are effectively casting a protest vote against the entire modern world. Thomas PM Barnett would sniff haughtily at their “Caboose Braking.” He defines this below.

The situation that arises when a country’s elites or more competitive segments (the engine) wire themselves up to globalization more quickly than the weaker portions of society (the caboose) can accommodate. The “caboose” is typically the inland, rural, more agricultural base of the population, which likewise constitutes the bulk of poverty in any country–including the US

How could they do such backward things? Who would deliberately vote for a platform that would consign the entire country to the Non-Integrated Gap? Barnett demonstrates how much more compassionate and enlightened what he calls the Functional Core is in the chart below.

To Some A Blessing, To Others A Curse

This chart tells two compelling stories. It tells one story to the committed Post-Modern, it tells another to a Traditionalist. The Post-Modern sees freedom, spreading as civilization illuminates the primeval dark reaches of benighted humanity. The Traditionalist sees a detestable rock video of some freak acting out masturbatory fantasies on a piece of stage equipment. The Post-Modern sees a cleaner, fairer and better future. The Traditionalist sees all that is holy and sacred profaned.

In practical terms, we are better served hoping Egypt joins the core. It’s been almost 70 years now since major, leading nations such as The US, Great Britain, Germany and Japan have unleashed war on each other. The Urban Legend has it that no two nations that have McDonalds Franchises can wage a major military conflict. It almost makes up for their crappy cheeseburgers and insipid fries. People die from obesity; not famine in the globalized world. Globalization succeeded where Leninism failed and the peasants have acquired their “Land, Peace and Bread.”

Yet critics would argue that Globalism also succeeded where Leninism succeeded. The birth rates plummet in the so-called functional core. Divorce rates sky-rocket, mosque, synagogue and church attendance atrophies. Cities become dysfunctional, urban war zones. This is because the culture has been sublimated to the state and religion is now increasingly viewed as the opiate of the masses. Spengler describes the sub-human Nietzschean Last Men that he sees in Western Europe.

They have no ambition but to die quietly, no concerns except for those amusements which might reduce boredom and anxiety en route to the grave. They have no passions except hatred born of envy. They hate America, a new kind of universality that succeeded where the old Christian empire failed. They hate Israel, which makes the Jewish people appear all the more eternal in stark contrast to Europe’s morbid temporality. They will pass out of history unmourned even by themselves.

So who should the Egyptians vote for? Stoning the adulterers or killing their reasons for continuing to exist? I’d feel happier having a choice between Howard Dean and Pat Buchanan. I’m not vindictive enough to accuse the Egyptians of proudly voting for a party that wants to stone adulterers and cut the hands off of all thieves. Honor killing isn’t what I would consider a popular platform – unless plan B involved my cultural identity destroyed and my values subjected to tyranny.

So Egypt has no desire to subjugate its economy to the electronic herd or wear the golden straight-jacket. They also had no desire to submit themselves to a coercive military-led junta. Like the Germans chaffing under the punitive Treaty of Versailles, the Egyptians stood ready to vote for any alternative at all that represented Plan C. The Muslim Brotherhood, in all its backward, brutal glory, checked that box.

My question for the US President who came into power in 2008, prepared to resurrect America’s image around the world, is this. Why could America find no plausible alternative to Medieval Sharia Law to support and help offer to the people of Egypt? Could it be that in the eyes of the world America now represents something far more inhuman and worse?